


Philosophy and Composition Essay

by Emeraldwhale



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Essay, Other, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24816442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwhale/pseuds/Emeraldwhale
Summary: An essay I had to write for my final in my Philosophy and Composition class. I liked how it came out, so you can read it if you'd like.
Kudos: 1





	Philosophy and Composition Essay

**Author's Note:**

> I edited my name out, for obvious reasons. (I changed it to "the girl," so if it seems awkward then that's why)

The date is October 4th, 2019. A young girl scrambles to finish her “I believe” paper for her philosophy class. She sits down in front of her Chromebook, her scraggly notes open beside her. “What’s a good topic?” She thinks, “What is something that _ I _ believe in?” A pause. Then her fingers fly across the keys as she begins to expound on the virtues of empathy. This mindset still exists within her today, but now it has been weathered down by the curse of experience. The writings of Camus and Orwell, combined with the imminent apocalyptic new year will serve to shape and change this ideal, revealing it to be only a piece of a much larger picture. To quote Friedrich Nietzche’s  _ Ecce Homo _ , “only the decadent call  _ compassion _ a virtue. ...compassionate hands can at times be interfering in a downright destructive way with a great destiny, the growing isolation amongst the wounded and the  _ privilege _ of a great wrong.”

The school year carries on. The three previous years of hardship in school prove not to be in vain; her grades become steady, and her morale improves. She chooses her first book:  _ 1984 _ by George Orwell. The new ideas surround and enchant her. In the second half of the book, the main character, Winston Smith, is arrested by the man he trusted and thrown in jail to starve. Eventually he is then tortured into submission by the same man. Yet amidst the excruciating pain, he feels an unexpected feeling, “The old feeling, that at bottom it did not matter whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy, had come back. O’Brien was a person who could be talked to. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” Those were the very first sentences throughout the whole book that caused the girl to shut her book and just think for a while. In the absence of empathy, why is it that what is sought to fill that void is the wish to be understood? In the face of immense cruelty, of indescribable pain, and of unimaginable suffering, does one  _ need  _ to be understood above all else? The first ideals to test her concept of empathy being virtuous began there, on that cloudy afternoon in November. The intellectual challenge was both thrilling and vertigo inducing.

December begins. The class is introduced to the myth of Sisyphus, along with the ideals of Existentialism, Nihilism, and the Absurd. The first reading about the Absurd begins with Camus’  _ The Guest _ . The girl opens her stapled packet containing the short story, takes out her highlighter, and begins. Yet, something happens that has never happened before: she doesn’t get it. She re-reads the story. She looks up analyses online. The story still doesn’t make any sense. Eventually, the time to write an analysis comes. She begins to do the only thing she can do. She makes it up. The girl writes her first draft, the most empty draft ever written. Within the words, there is nothing, just a hollow shell. However, even a shell is something, and something cannot come from nothing. Through writing the paper, she comes to realize the point of the text; the story is an exploration of the consequences of choice in relation to society. The experience of struggling to learn something is a foreign one, but she comes out of it stronger than she went in.

Then, the disaster known as 2020 welcomed her with open arms, before beating her into submission. However, first it introduced her to Camus’  _ The Stranger _ , her favorite work of the year. It’s teachings on the Absurd were eye opening. The idea of “nothing matters” was no new concept, sure, but finding  _ freedom _ in accepting that? That was inspiring. “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself-so like a brother, really-! felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.” It was at this sentence that this girl felt a true kinship with Camus; she felt  _ understood. _

It was at this point that the world was plunged into a pandemic, and the young girl could only watch in horror as her world crumbled beneath her feet. She lost everything: senior prom, graduation, the music trip that only happens every two years, several music performances, seeing her friends, saying goodbye to her teachers, access to a physical learning environment, and many, many other things. The coping mechanisms and methods she had worked so hard to build became null under the new crisis. She plunged into an abyss of grief and rage. How dare the school expect students to work under these circumstances? What about those who have lost people close to them? The world is in the middle of a mass pandemic, and we’re expected to care about petty assignments? It was during this period where she decided: humans are worth nothing. To live for oneself is the only way to be truly alive. While we always will need other people to survive, we need to first acknowledge the right to be selfish. Once we free ourselves from the binds of the illusion of empathy, only then can we actually help others.


End file.
